


the sea and its waters, every unwanted daughter

by abbyleaf101



Series: every unwanted daughter [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Coming of Age, Gen, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mild Suicidal Ideation, Queer Youth, See notes for content notes, outside pov, post-159, scottish safehouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:54:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23420521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbyleaf101/pseuds/abbyleaf101
Summary: "There’s someone new in the village.Well. Not in the village, exactly, because the Werewolf Murder Cottage is a few miles along the old dirt path out past the old pond, which is less a pond than a small, smelly mud patch, visible by dint of being only slightly wetter and slightly smellier than everything else. There are half sunken fence posts around the edge, and at night they rise out of the gloom like lost spirits, or the fingers of a giant, grasping hand. There are rusty old bikes and the husk of old washing machines and an almost endless supply of crumpled beer cans, too, and if there are any bodies in the mud they’ve long since turned into the same heavy, sucking sludge as the hillside. Sometimes, late at night, she thinks being a smudge of used-to-be-bone in the palm of that crooked, ancient hand might not be so bad; it would be quiet, at least, and almost no-one goes out that way anymore. But those are the kinds of thoughts that get you sent to the school nurse and a letter written home to the parents, so it’s better to keep them inside.This isn’t about the maybe-bones, anyway. It’s about the new people."Or: Jon and Martin, lonely ghosts, and hope
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: every unwanted daughter [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684705
Comments: 53
Kudos: 327





	the sea and its waters, every unwanted daughter

**Author's Note:**

> well, here it is, folks! 
> 
> I have poured a great deal of myself and my experiences into this fic, and I am immensely proud of how much work I put into it and how well it's come out. This fic as a whole has undergone at least three major re-writes and profound re-structuring, not to mention the countless minor revisions and corrections over the months. Many of the experiences and imagery in this is drawn from personal experience, and the process of writing it has been both cathartic and rewarding. The last five or six months haven't been the easiest, but I am so glad I managed to get this out before S5 begins 
> 
> A massive thank you has to go out to the writer's discord, without whom this fic literally wouldn't exist. Their enthusiasm, kindness and encouragement has been invaluable, not to mention the feedback and sound boarding. In particular, I want to thank jasmine and rustkid for their input and cheerleading - this fic is in part dedicated to you. 
> 
> Remember that, regardless of anything else, you have no idea of the profound impact your mere existance has on the world. Your presence here is a net gain. Don't doubt that we are all better off for having you here - whatever happens tomorrow
> 
> title is from The Amazing Devil's 'King'. please see the End Notes for more detailed content warnings

There’s someone new in the village. 

Well. Not _in_ the village, exactly, because the Werewolf Murder Cottage is a few miles along the old dirt path out past the old pond, which is less a pond than a small, smelly mud patch, visible by dint of being only slightly wetter and slightly smellier than everything else. There are half sunken fence posts around the edge, and at night they rise out of the gloom like lost spirits, or the fingers of a giant, grasping hand. There are rusty old bikes and the husk of old washing machines and an almost endless supply of crumpled beer cans, too, and if there are any bodies in the mud they’ve long since turned into the same heavy, sucking sludge as the hillside. Sometimes, late at night, she thinks being a smudge of used-to-be-bone in the palm of that crooked, ancient hand might not be so bad; it would be quiet, at least, and almost no-one goes out that way anymore. But those are the kinds of thoughts that get you sent to the school nurse and a letter written home to the parents, so it’s better to keep them inside. 

This isn’t about the maybe-bones, anyway. It’s about the new people. 

Sarah hasn’t seen them yet. Nobody has, except for Mrs. Rhodes, who owns the garage and shoulder charged Tracey Becks out of the way so she could serve them, establishing herself as the most interesting person in the village, at least temporarily. Not that it’s a high bar to reach, being most interesting. 

Nobody’s told _Sarah_ anything about them, obviously. But it’s the only thing the village has talked about for days, and the cafe is small enough she can hear everything that’s being said, even with the radio turned up full. From Mrs. Rhodes, she learns they _got a taxi up from town_ , like that doesn’t happen every time the upper sixth goes out for a drink. The apparent shopping list: tea, milk, bread, margarine, loo roll. They’d _barely said a word_ , just offered wan smiles and a quiet ‘thank you’ in response to Mrs Rhodes’s borderline interrogation. Tracey Becks had _tried_ to say they just seemed tired, presumably put out her fifteen minutes of village fame had been usurped by her boss, but to no avail. Failure to answer Mr Rhodes promptly and satisfactorily was a transgression on par with shooting a puppy or improperly washed lace curtains - people who didn’t _have_ lace curtains being, of course, so profane as to be invisible to Mrs Rhodes - and the strangers had been immediately deemed A Bad Sort. 

“One of them was, you know -” Mrs. Rhodes had added to the knitting circle, glancing anxiously around the cafe before gesturing at her face and dropping her voice, as if expecting undercover police officers to jump out of the ice cream cooler and cart her away. The gesture could have been meant to imply almost anything, from a missed smudge of red sauce from breakfast to the sudden manifestation of demonic horns. But Tracey Becks told everyone it was _actually_ because the older man had a bunch of scars and wore his long hair in a neat plait. Probably it was made up, but something about the description of the scars - perfect, round, clustered around the jawline - reminded Sarah too much of the cigarette burns her uncle used to make on the sofa, and anyway it was a silly thing to invent, because who would believe something like that? 

And that had been it, really - the newcomers had stumped the village rumour mill by simply - not doing anything. No-one had seen them come back into the village; if they ventured outside the cottage at all, no-one but the cows saw them. No new vehicles had been spotted in the village; only the usual taxi that took Scott to the cross country coach for his physical therapy appointment, and _that_ was paid for by the hospital; no amount of begging or cajoling or artfully applied scones could get the driver to add an extra passenger, no matter how hard Ms. Edgcombe tried. Even Mrs. Rhodes’s real life encounter with the mysterious men in the Werewolf Murder Cottage was rapidly exhausting its social capita, because there are only so many ways to recite an incredibly mundane shopping list. 

Except - except Mrs. Rhodes had also leaned in to her knitting circle with an expression like a dog’s arse and muttered something about _those types, you know, two men_ \- but Sarah had thought she’d heard the oven timer go off, and by the time she got back from double checking the rota Mrs. Rhodes had moved on to the appalling state of church flower displays these days. 

**_**

Up in the heather-covered hills, the fog lies thick against the ground, snaking tendrils of damp fog to catch at her ankles, tug on her laces. Her body displaces it, leaves little rips in the blanket of damp air, before something rushes in to fill it. Moving leaves a trail of bleeding space, and maybe you could see if, if you were quick and careful enough. If you looked closely enough and really listened; it’s so quiet, maybe you could even hear it. But nobody does, and nobody bothers her, either, except for the sheep. 

Sarah watched the rock she’d kicked all the way from the summit sail into a thicket of heather and disappear forever. She thought maybe she should swear, rage at the sky, scatter the tiny heather blossom across the ground with a vicious kick. She’d nearly _done_ it, gotten it back down onto the gravel path without losing it, like she managed more often than not, now. The failure should rankle, but the fog seemed to blanket her as surely as it blanketed the ground. Her heart hadn’t really been in it, and anyway, that kick had been a bit wide on account of - of - 

Ugh. 

She’d been daydreaming, telling stories to herself about the kind of monsters that might lurk in the rolling hills and steal her away, banshee and werewolf and changeling. There had always been rumours about the Werewolf Murder Cottage, of course; the strangers moving in had only added fuel to the fire. _Triple homicide_ , the adults whispered behind their hands, while her classmates giggled about ‘their very own Texan Chainsaw Massacre’. If sufficiently bribed with attention and top-shelf alcohol, Bry would tell stories about howling on the wind on full moons; blood spots in the fields and drag marks on the path, mutilated lambs. Her peers told stories about tormented screaming, dark shapes silhouetted against the curtains, and that Billy Young had dared to touch the door on Halloween night and been brutally murdered for the trouble, that the pretty climbing roses grew so red from between his ribs. 

But there were older stories, too, older than red roses and police sirens and school yard dares. Lonely lost women in white, searching always for something precious they had lost. Crooked old hags, cursed into hideousness and banished, condemned to eat frogs and lizards and children’s hearts. A neat line of six souls, bags over their heads, swinging. Buried where they fell, discarded on unconsecrated ground, to salt the soil with blood and venom and rot, until all who lived in the house built there turned black and putrid, too. It was not the blood of boys that fed the red, red roses and turned their thorns so sharp. 

It was always women, in the older tales. Lost women, lonely women, strange women. Who spoke too much or not enough, who could do things other people couldn’t, who _did_ things other people couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t. Who dared to love something beyond the confines of the village, beyond the limits of their own hearts

It’s not scary, the cottage. It’s _sad_. 

But thinking about the cottage makes her think about - 

_Strange_ , again, in the same tone of voice they always used for _triple homicide_ , for _two men_. 

“Maybe they _are_ the serial killers,” Timothy Lax had drawled, half the village sitting around the duck pond on Saturday, waiting for the bus into town. “And now they’ve retired.” 

“I don’t think serial killers _retire_ ,” Mandy had replied, looking bored and mildly superior, as if she wasn’t the one sitting in a patch of wet mud like the rest of them. 

“On the run?” Jake asked, instead, and flicked a handful of sodden grass at Mandy just for the way she shrieked, and Sarah turned her face away from them, looking out over the green towards the hills again. 

On the run, maybe. Neither of them looked like how she’d imagine people on the run, from the brief glances she’d stolen. None of the long tan coats and sunglasses and broad brimmed hats; neither seemed likely to conceal a gun or hide or a vicious knife in their sock. Mostly they just looked… like people. Tired, a little bit ill. Frightened, but people had lots of reasons to be frightened, especially - especially two men who - 

But the heather and the fog and her rock had been a nice distraction, while it lasted, even if her hands were numb when she bent to re-tie a lace. 

The path back down to the village takes Sarah along the outskirts of Tom’s farm, following the fence down the curve of the hillside and through the outbuildings, three foot ridges of mud on either side of the road where the tractor wheels - 

Oh. The _strangers_ were standing at the fence closest to the road - faced away from her, looking out towards the fields. They looked like they’d been out for a walk, like her; boots, thick socks, warm coats. They were both wearing wonky scarves. The fog had lifted, for the moment - she could see across to the cattle herd at the far end of the field, grazing. The taller man had a hand thrown out towards them, and as she watched, he laughed; the wind stole his voice but she didn’t need to hear the sound to read the joy in it. The other man - the man with the scars - was barely visible to her; he seemed nothing so much as a solid, still point in reality around which the taller man orientated himself, their bodies curled together. The wind swept his greying hair around into something tangled and wild. She still couldn’t hear them, could barely see them past the curtain of her own hair; there seemed to be nothing in the world besides them and her own thundering heart. 

Sarah ran the long way home, cutting across fields and down the side of the church. It took much longer and the mud was worse, and she almost lost a shoe in the process; a storm was rolling in, heavy and grey and oppressive. She should have carried on; stuck to the gravel path and fuck the strangers for intruding on her solitude. But the fog had lifted with the storm and she might have been _seen_ ; they might have looked up from their private universe and noticed her runaway heartbeat and the wild panic in her eyes, and the thought felt like the summer she’d fallen off the water butts into a clump of nettles taller than she was, the tight, itchy bands across all of her exposed skin that not even an oat bath had managed to soothe.

She didn’t stop, couldn’t stop, until she was at home and there were three closed doors between herself and the outside world. Turned the shower on as high as she could stand it, until she was bathed in steam again, until even her own reflection wasn’t privy to the truth of her.

Because she’d seen, when the taller man had turned in the half light coming in over the hills, a glint of multi-coloured metal at his lapel. She didn’t think people actually _wore_ them, not out in the real world where anyone could see. They were for - for news reports about Pride that her parents always turned off with an anxious look in her direction, muttering about _bad influences_ and _keep it behind closed doors._ Or for marches or politicians or celebrities, not moth-eaten strangers in tiny Scottish villages in the middle of nowhere, who ate fish and chips with their fingers and signed up for library cards and helped Cathy carry the bouquets into church… 

Things like that - _people_ like that - didn’t exist. Not here. Not for her.

**_**

The thing about town - 

The thing about town was that it was dangerous, because it was bigger, and fuller, and it was easier to feel like you were just part of the crowd. Like you weren’t being _observed_.

Of course, you always were. Sarah knew that, because old Mrs. Moore’s daughter worked in the bank and went home every Sunday for her dinner, and the Kenrick’s still attended church up at the village. One bus a week meant that everyone had to do their gossiping in six hours instead of six days. The first time Sarah had scraped together enough dinner money and scavenged gutter change to get her hair cut short, the news had gotten home to her parents before she had. While the resulting fight hadn’t been quite as explosively loud as it might otherwise had been, given Sarah’s plan to dramatically reveal her short shorn sides at the dinner table, it did rob her of the rare opportunity to have something concrete to cry _about_ when she finally slunk off to bed.

Besides, town was barely bigger than the village, however much it liked to pretend otherwise. The post office and bank occupied different buildings, true. Street lights and two way traffic, but only so far as the roundabout, after which the creep of civilisation once again gave way to rolling hills. There was even a supermarket, from which Sarah was tasked with fetching all of the supplies the grocer never carried; stir fry noodles, asparagus, and strawberries out of season. But that was all. There was just as much cow shit on the roads here as in the village. 

There wasn’t even a tourist office; no wayward soul with a plastic-covered map and inappropriate shoes wandering around looking for more sheep to photograph, or the nearest pub, or some obscure lump of rock, half swallowed by the peat. At least then it could have offered the _illusion_ of any thirty second stretch in which you weren’t immediately recognised. But no - no backpackers, no retirees, no nature bloggers. Just the same hundred yards of brick and concrete, devoid even of an obscuring blanket of fog.

But there _was_ a bookshop. 

The bookshop fascinated Sarah. It always had; frayed memories of being tugged past by her mother’s impatient hand, watching the orange-tinted windows from the hairdressers across the road, tripping inside after her birthday, pockets full and weighted down and burning against her leg. It wasn’t a big bookshop; it definitely wasn’t an up-to-date one. It carried the same reliable stock of bodice rippers and tractor manuals as it had when she was ten; the “new releases” were dusty. Even still, it called to her; the one fixed point that remained even when the rattle of the bus window pushed every other thought out of her head, that dragged her out of bed on awful, grey mornings when she felt awful and grey and empty, too. 

Because in the back of the bookshop was a secret. 

In the back of the bookshop, there was a shelf. Dustier even than the new releases, it held anything deemed not for general consumption. Mostly this meant engineering manuals and old ration books and medical textbooks. There were the usual suspects, of course; the violent books, the banned books, the risque books. 

But that wasn’t the secret. Or that wasn’t Sarah’s secret, anyway - no doubt some other enterprising soul had found the repository of forbidden fruit and hoarded it all for themselves, or passed whispers of it to their friends. But there had never been any whispers about _this_ secret, as far as Sarah knew.

But maybe they were doing the same thing Sarah was, a pointed sort of _not looking_ . Because looking meant you were curious, and being curious meant you were interested, and being interested was - well. Because Sarah was doing it right now, the not-looking, loitering in the back of the shop by the ordnance survey maps. Not even a glance, and yet it exerted some influence over her that she could not control. A wild pounding in her heart, an itching in her palms - pressure in the small of her back and deep in her gut, tugging, pushing and pulling her back, week after week. Like Gollum and the ring - or maybe she’d been the werewolf in the cottage all along, her heart turned feral and hungry in her breast, and now the cottage had gotten the strangers too, with all its lonely ghosts. She’d touched the books only once, when she was younger, before she _knew_ ; that must have been when they’d wound their trailing vines around her, reached out tendrils that sank into her skin, her heart, her belly. Must be what it was for, this secret; meant to trap. It had worked, caught her true and proper, like a leg trap she couldn’t knaw herself free from. It held her trapped always, even when she was lying in her own bed, lonely and distraught. 

_Surely it would be okay to look_ , the trap whispered, prickling thorns all along her skin. _Just once. If you look - pick us up, take it home, soothe the churning hunger_ \- 

But it was a lie. Sarah knew it was. Looking was curiosity was interest was condemnation, after all. No matter how much they called to her, the rainbow-marked books would have to stay where they were. And that’s why town was dangerous, because it made her feel like it might be safe. Safe to look, to feel, to give in. But secrets had to be secrets. 

Next week she wouldn’t go. She’d resist the calling, smother the beast in her chest, and - oh. The strangers, on a rare joint outing. 

The other thing about everyone going to town every Saturday was, she supposed, it left the village much quieter - almost deserted. She’d never really thought about it; _quieter_ was the last thing she wanted, when quiet made you stand out more. It was the only thing she liked about the cafe, really; people saw the uniform, not _her_ , and there was always something more interesting around than the bland face that took your order and cleared your plates away after you left. But perhaps if everyone looked at you _anyway_ , less eyes overall might feel safer. If you could see the holes torn through the air as a body moved.

They were just leaving - tugging on coats, picking up shopping bags, adjusting hats and scarves and clothes. The lapel pin flashed in the light - Sarah felt that feral, fighting thing flare up behind her ribs again, clawing to be let free. Another rainbow label, another sprung trap. The man with the pin had already been caught - if someone had noticed, had _seen_ \- people noticed creases in her school trousers, ink stains on her cuffs, every blemish. If they hadn’t bothered to hide their disdain about _that_ , then - But, but perhaps - perhaps he would be lucky, and no-one would realise what it _meant_ \- 

She just. Hoped. That the pin wouldn’t get him in trouble, is all. Get _them_ into trouble. 

Their hands were curled together. Sarah watched them leave. _Run,_ she thought, desperately, as the thing in her chest screamed. Run, or fight, or do _something_ , but they didn’t. On the other side of the curved glass the one with the cane grimaced, paused, tugged on his partner’s hand, and they both stopped. Backpacks came off, the cane leant up against the low windowsill carefully. She watched them re-pack the bags, redistribute the weight of their shopping; all the things they could carry between them - and a few more, besides. Rice, flour, pasta, vegetables, tea. 

And - a kiss. Tacked onto the end of a gesture, a little nothingness in the practical re-distribution of their load, shared between them. Neither had looked around first, their bodies already tilted together, like closed parentheses. Unhurried, practiced, just a sharing of space and an amused huff of laughter Sarah couldn’t hear. But it had felt stolen, nonetheless, snatched out of the air. 

Sarah was not looking.

  
  


**_**

It’s not like Sarah saw them every day after that or anything. 

The shorter man she saw hardly at all - almost _no-one_ saw him. He preferred to stay within the cottage’s rust-red fence while his partner ventured out. If they ventured into the heather-blanketed hills, she’d never seen them - but the hills were big, almost endless, and it was easy to avoid other people. It was, after all, why she’d been drawn to them herself. Whether they ventured out to the cow field Sarah didn’t know - she hadn’t been back that way since she’d first seen them on the road, since - since - 

She saw his partner more often. He came down into the village occasionally, with his satchel and backpack. Sarah could watch him walk the length of the street from the cafe’s large, clear windows. Always the same stops, in the same order; post office, grocery, charity shop. He was in town again today, half-heartedly picking through the bins of books and cassettes outside the charity shop. He’d seen it all before, of course - rejected detritus from his last trip into town. But he stopped every time, anyway, in the hopes of uncovering something he’d missed. Or else returned with lower standards and more desperation, which marked his slow transformation into a true local as surely as the accumulated cow muck on his shoes. At least his presence seemed to have caused acute distress to Mr Peters, who watched the stranger’s leisurely browsing and pin-adorned satchel like an overgrown vulture.

She lost sight of him after that, lost behind the curve of the road. Nothing out that way except the garage and Mrs Rhodes’s gossip. It was a view she spent several hours a day staring at, watching villagers and farmers and foolhardy travellers wander that way only to return, ten minutes later, shoulders laden down by thwarted optimism. 

She watched him come back; through the window she could see his face, open and calm, fingers curled around the strap of his bag. The pin glinted in the sunlight - the thing in Sarah’s chest raised its head, sniffed the air. The thought rose unbidden - a kiss, soft and warm. Closed parenthesis. Clasped hands. The insistent tugging, to look and to take and to steal. Another closely guarded secret, tucked down deep with her lonely ghosts and lost, lonely women. It was safe, there, where nobody could get it. 

The door opening startled her - and there he was, the stranger, the man with the pin. Without half a hillside or a plane of glass in the way, he looked - well, _ordinary_. Windswept and pink-cheeked, curls shot through with a few strands of white at the temples she hadn’t noticed before. He didn’t even look that much like a stranger anymore; she knew his scarf and his hat didn’t match, that he never had his gloves, that he avoided walking too close to the road, unless it was to step neatly over snails on the pavement. He felt familiar, even though she didn’t know his name. The thing in her chest waited, breathless.

“Oh, hello! I’ll have - hmm…” He’d never been in before, Sarah was sure - the menu wasn’t that long, and anyway she would surely have heard about it if he had been. There was no-one else in the cafe, no queue to serve or tables to clean. There was only Brenda, on her annual penance home from university, dead to the world under large, noise-cancelling headphones. A blessing and a curse, both, that Sarah could wait the stranger out. She could look, but she had nowhere to hide. 

“Tea and a brownie slice, please,” was the eventual verdict, with a smile that reached his eyes but seemed to slide sideways off his face, like he’d only just learned how and it took a lot of concentration to pin it in place. He paid her with an English bank note and a quiet ‘thank you’, took the tray over to a corner table; sat with his back to the wall and facing outwards. Back to no-one, and a clear view of the window, the door, her counter, her. He pulled out a phone, an ancient brick of a thing, the kind where saying hello meant clicking thirteen keys. Not enough reception up here for internet access, and the cottage probably didn’t have... 

And then she sort of - forgot about him, gently, for all she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him a second before. 

“Thank you for the cake and the tea.” He’d snuck up on her, apparently, quietly enough that the sound of his voice nearly startled her off her stool. But he’d brought the tray up to the counter with him, so Sarah would probably forgive him. He seemed to brighten, somehow, when she looked at him - as if he’d been standing under storm clouds that suddenly cleared. Became more real than the half-there ghost that had sat in the corner of the cafe for the past half hour. 

“O - of course,” Sarah managed, as he turned away from the counter. An instinct seized her, the thing in her chest roaring to life, fighting against the cage of her ribs. “Wait! I - I like your pin!” 

The man paused in the doorway, a hand on the door, and turned back to face her. The thing in her chest tried to trawl its way into her throat; but when she finally tore her mortified gaze away from the floor, his face had gone soft and sad. Distant. 

“Thank you. It was a - a gift from a friend.” He laid fingertips against the metal for a moment; straightened it on his lapel and double checked the clasp. “I’d almost forgotten it was there. Thank you for reminding me.” 

“You - you’re welcome,” Sarah choked out, still watching him; watching the glint of the pin in the light. 

And then he was gone, the door closing behind him with a muffled thud. She watched him go, back up the road, rounded shoulders and chin up; she thought maybe he was smiling. 

The thing in her chest lay down. 

**_**

It was a Saturday, and Sarah was on the bus. 

On the other side of the glass, she replayed the kiss; closed parentheses, clasped hands, easy smiles. A stolen moment - for herself, if not for them. A conversation, an affirmation. And a roaring in her chest, pushing and cajoling and reaching - 

She’d felt it, the thing in her chest, for as long as she could remember. Since the first time she’d seen the shelf in the back of the bookshop, really understood what it was, what it meant. Before she knew _why_ it mattered, she’d felt it, like a wave, threatening to send her under. Like someone had set a trap for her, when she was too young to understand it - things around her trying to catch her, pull her down under the force of the wave, wrap her up in it so she couldn’t escape. Something external to herself - it came from the shelf in the bookshop, from secrets, from whispers and snarled disdain. Something had hooked itself into her chest and refused to let her go, something reaching and dangerous. 

But the thing in her chest was her oldest friend, and it only seemed scared when someone else looked at it. Maybe she’d got the direction wrong, all along - it wasn’t something reaching into her chest, it was something reaching out. Desperately. Looking for a - a second bracket, a closing parenthesis. Company, even.

The shelf in the back of the bookshop was where it always was - by the ordnance survey maps, and the medical textbooks. There was no fog in here, but her body still left torn holes in the falling dust as she moved; the creature in her chest reaching out, yearning and hungry and joyful.

She sat down, and she looked. 

Maybe there were ghosts in the cottage, or monsters - but they didn’t have to be lonely, and she didn’t have to be one of them. 

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes:
> 
> Sarah is heavily influenced by my own experiences as a fifteen year old girl working through her attraction to women in less than supportive circumstances.  
> Please heed the warnings for suicidal ideation and general depression and anxiety. Furthermore, Sarah alludes to instances of homophobia and queerphobia she has experienced directly or overheard, and has also internalised many of those messages.  
> There are references to murder, blood, violence against women, abuse, child loss, child murder and hanging during the witch trials in Part 2, although these are non-explicit
> 
> you can find me @ kneesntoess on tumblr


End file.
